Global News and Analysis

Source: Alternet

ISIS is the least of their problems, as Libya struggles with daily violence and economic distress.

On October 14, a former Prime Minister of Libya – Khalifa al-Ghwell – gathered some supporters at the Rixos Hotel in Tripoli and announced that he was the new head of government. It was a curious moment for this former engineer from the city of Misrata – the hotbed of the anti-Qaddafi uprising in 2011. Various militia outfits that support al-Ghwell surrounded the Rixos, but did not have the capacity to seize the main institutions of the country. It was more like a press conference than a declaration of a coup. read more

Source: The Guardian Unlimited

What if the United States went to war and nobody here even noticed? The question is absurd, isn’t it? And yet, this almost perfectly describes what actually happened this past week.

While many Americans, myself included, were all hypnotized by the bizarre spectacle of the Republican nominee for president, a US navy destroyer fired a barrage of cruise missiles at three radar sites controlled by the rebel Houthi movement in Yemen. This attack marked the first time the US has fought the rebels directly in Yemen’s devastating civil war. read more

Source: Rolling Stone

Win, lose or drop out, the Republican nominee has laid waste to the American political system. On the trail for the last gasp of the ugliest campaign in our nation’s history

Saturday, early October, at a fairground 40 minutes southwest of Milwaukee. The very name of this place, Elkhorn, conjures images of past massacres on now-silent fields across our blood-soaked history. Nobody will die here; this is not Wounded Knee, but it is the end of an era. The modern Republican Party will perish on this stretch of grass. read more

Source: The Intercept

For years, WikiLeaks has been publishing massive troves of documents online — usually taken without authorization from powerful institutions and then given to the group to publish — while news outlets report on their relevant content. In some instances, these news outlets work in direct partnership with WikiLeaks — as the New York Times and The Guardian, among others, did when jointly publishing the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and U.S. diplomatic cables — while other times media outlets simply review the archives published by WikiLeaks and then report on what they deem newsworthy. read more

Source: Alternet

Fifteen years ago, the United States went to war on Afghanistan. It was the opening salvo in the Global War on Terror. Massive US bombardment chased the Taliban and al-Qaeda into the mountains as well as into neighboring states – such as Pakistan. Amongst those who fled the scene was Osama Bin Laden, who was not killed until 2011 – ten years later. The US war aims were simple: prevent Afghanistan from being a haven for al-Qaeda and bring democracy to Afghanistan by ejecting the Taliban. There were also noises made about liberating women and educating the Afghan citizenry. read more

Source: Mother Jones

The author of a new history of the Attica uprising talks about prison strikes and work behind bars.

The nationwide prison strike that began September 9 has largely wound down. Inmates have returned to work, though some smaller hunger strikes are still taking place. It’sunclear what long-term changes the strike may bring. Yet the protest, timed to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising, has made waves: An estimated 24,000 inmates missed work and as many as 29 prisons were affected, according to activists.

It’s also brought renewed attention to our prison labor system. About 700,000 of America’s 1.5 million prison inmates have jobs, and they work for as little as 12 to 40 cents an hour with few workplace protections. “It’s utterly exploitative,” says Heather Ann Thompson, a professor of Afroamerican and African studies and history at the University of Michigan and the author of the new book Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. “Some farms in Nevada are paying 8 cents a day. Some jail workers are paid nothing.” Thompson, who has extensively studied prison labor, says prisoners are expected to work more than they have at any timesince the Civil War, when prisons leased out convicts to private companies. read more